Lloyd takes a dominant victory at Shanghai

Daniel Lloyd took a dominant victory in the TCR Asia/TCR China first race at Shanghai International Circuit. The reigning TCR UK champion drove his Honda Civic into the lead, overtaking his teammate and pole sitter Martin Xie halfway through the ten-lap race. He then pulled away and won with a margin of four seconds over Luca Engstler who was the winner of the TCR Asia race.
At the start, the two Dongfeng MacPro Racing Honda cars of Xie and Lloyd sprinted from the front row of the grid and took command, while Engstler jumped from fifth to third at T1. During the first lap a collision between Alex Liu and Alex Hui forced the latter to retire.
Behind the leading trio, Pepe Oriola and Diego Moran delivered an exciting fight for fourth, swapping the positions several time, while Sunny Wong was following them closely in sixth place.
Lloyd began to attack Xie and eventually passed him on lap 6; Engstler benefited from the situation and passed Xie as well moving up into second. While Lloyd was able to create a gap, Xie momentarily lost third position to Oriola on lap 8, but regained it on the following lap. In the final moments, Sunny Wong retired with a turbo issue and Huang Chu Han inherited the sixth place.
Lloyd won from Engstler, Xie and Oriola. The two podiums were filled by Lloyd, Xie and Huang for TCR China; Engstler, Oriola and Moran for TCR Asia.
Race 2 will start tomorrow at 09:45 local time (03:45 CET) with Alex Liu and Pepe Oriola filling the front row of the top-ten reverse grid; live streaming at www.tcr-series.tv.

Race 1
1. Daniel Lloyd (Dongfeng MacPro Racing, Honda Civic FK7), 10 laps
2. Luca Engstler (Team Engstler, Hyundai i30 N), 4.140
3. Martin Xie (Dongfeng MacPro Racing, Honda Civic FK7), 7.660
4. Pepe Oriola (Indigo Racing, Hyundai i30 N), 7.999
5. Diego Moran (Team Engstler, Hyundai i30 N), 9.571

Championship points TCR Asia
1. Engstler 113 pts; 2. Moran 96; 3. Oriola 68

Championship points TCR China
1. Lloyd 53 pts; 2. Huang 44; 3. Look 30